


it's gonna be a long, long time

by purplefennels7



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), if you squint a little - Freeform, lowercase as aesthetic, the tony and nebula bonding we all deserve, with a side order of Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-29 16:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17207207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: it turns out that being stuck alone in space isn't so bad at all. tony and nebula, from the bitter beginning until the end.





	it's gonna be a long, long time

**Author's Note:**

> oops

“you’ll die out there,” nebula says. tony nods, looking up at the benetar’s swept-back wings, the faint twinkle of stars past titan’s clouded atmosphere. he feels cold, sharp-edged, the half-healed wound in his side throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

 

“i will. but it’s better than dying down here.” she doesn't answer, and a moment later she walks past him and he watches her fingers skim across the side of the ship. the thought that she's leaving him barely has the time to cross his mind when the hatch is hissing down before him. their eyes meet for the barest fraction of a second, and he sees reflected there the razor edges threatening to swallow her whole. her gaze flickers away as she follows him into the ship, but he knows she’s seen the same thing in his.

 

—

 

it turns out that being stuck alone in space isn't so bad at all.

 

alright, it's bad at first. after that one brief moment of understanding the first day, nebula retreats into herself, spends most of her time in the cockpit staring out at the stars rushing by and snaps at him when he asks her questions. he gives up after a few tries because god, the world has come to a stop and he’s just too tired to fight anymore. he’s spent his whole life filling silence, dropping a snarky comment in to head off the growing weight of it, but ever since they'd taken off from titan he’s been drowning in it, little by little. grief is edged with nothing less than cold, brittle silence, and the benetar reeks of it. they can’t spare the power for heating, and even if they could it wouldn’t have helped, because the cold is inside, clawing its way out, and no amount of warmth can hinder it.

 

instead, he sits and tinkers and tries to forget that there’s nothing more than a thin skin of metal separating him from the vacuum. tries to forget that he’s failed. he’s living his own nightmare day after day and even if he just looks out a window he’s reminded of it. every little sound is the ship’s hull caving in. the hiss of machinery is oxygen escaping. every time he tries to sleep he jerks awake with a name on his lips and phantom dust on his hands. he never wanted to die like this, but it seems like the universe had other ideas.

 

—

 

in the end, they get used to each other. after a while tony ventures back up to the cockpit, braving nebula’s stony silence and the sight of the stars because he can’t stand being alone with his thoughts for one more minute. he finds that even though she still isn’t talking to him, he feels better with her there. no less hopeless, no less cold, but at least he isn’t alone.

 

when it becomes clear that nebula isn’t going to kick him out the second he opens his mouth, he starts talking. he spends days telling her about the home he's left behind, the home he isn’t even sure still exists. telling her about rhodey and bruce and pepper and nat and even steve. about jarvis and friday and dum-e. he’s met with silence, a hum of acknowledgment if he’s lucky, and even though he doesn't think it she is listening, collecting everything she can on this strange, broken man who seems so calm about his own death. and slowly, tentatively, she starts to offer up stories of her own. gamora — the good, and the bad, and the worse. the guardians, for the brief time she’d known them. but not thanos. never thanos. she knows he understands why.

 

“i loved her,” she says, chair turned to face the black. her voice shakes. out of the corner of his eye tony can see her fingers tapping out a pattern against the armrest.

 

“i would’ve liked to meet her,” tony says.

 

“she would’ve liked you.” a bittersweet smile curves her lips. “i wish we got the chance to be sisters. not the enemies thanos made us into.” it’s the first time she’s said the titan’s name.

 

—

 

tony finds her later, on her knees next to what used to be gamora’s bed with sharp sobs tearing their way out of her. he pauses in the doorway, clears his throat to tell her he’s there.

 

“get out,” she whispers, broken glass in her voice. tony doesn’t move. he wonders if she’s about to kill him. realizes he doesn’t care.

 

but she doesn’t. he’s all she has left, even though they barely know each other. she thinks they can call each other friends. after everything. so instead she dashes the tears away and turns to look at him.

 

"what was he like? your son?" she asks through a shaky breath. and just like that the ache in tony’s chest clamps down like it’s trying to tear his heart from his body. it’s the same one that threatens to overwhelm him every time he thinks about peter. the same one that had ripped through him as lifeless dust had slipped through his fingers. he opens his mouth to protest, without knowing why he is — _at least give him the dignity of calling him yours because he died for you_ — that peter isn't (wasn't) his son. but before he can make it through he’s choking on  “wasn’t” because peter parker should never be in the past tense and it’s his fault that he is. he wonders if may parker is alive to curse his name.

 

when tony can breathe enough to look up he finds nebula looking at him steadily, that damned expression that makes tony feel like she knows more about him than he knows about himself fixed on her face. only the tremble in her fingers betrays how close she is to suffocating in the blackness.

 

"yes, he was."

 

the fight goes out of tony all at once, knees buckling and sending him to the floor. he looks bleakly back at her.

 

“he - he was a good kid. he was kind, and funny, and brilliant, and he - pete was gonna change the world. he deserved so much more than what i gave him. i should’ve - i was a shitty dad, if i was one. i should’ve been better.”

 

nebula doesn’t say anything for a long moment, catalouging every time she’d seen them together. it’s silent for long enough that tony wonders if she’s horrified. if he’s managed to lose the only friend he has out here. and then she reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder.

 

“you were his father, whether you admit it or not. and you gave him your best. that was enough for him. he loved you. and he doesn’t blame you.”

 

—

 

something changes after that. she doesn’t get _warmer_ , not really, but the silences aren’t as sharp and her voice is a little softer and she never quite hides the ghost of a smile when tony gives her yet another stupid nickname. and tony spends more time up in the front of the ship talking to her and even though it still hurts he exchanges stories of peter for stories of gamora, stories of earth for stories of the galaxy, and with every story he feels a little bit lighter.

 

he starts telling her things that he’s never told anyone else. when she mentions the time she and gamora nearly killed each other, he tells her about the civil war. and when the panic comes, as he knew it would eventually, spending this much time in space, she brings him a cup of their scarce supply of water and sits with him until it’s over and even though he can tell that she doesn’t know what she’s doing he finds that it doesn’t really matter, because she cares. and that’s enough. and then, without her prompting, he tells her about new york. about the chitauri. about how he’d spent six years thinking about the myth of cassandra, cursed to never be believed. how it brought him here.

 

and as he does it he finds that she’s easier to talk to than many people. she doesn’t judge him for the things he’s done or the things his name represents. she doesn’t throw his regrets into his face. she just listens, and offers up the odd word of solidarity, and never presses when he feels like he can’t bear remembering one more thing. she knows him not as tony stark the billionaire, not as tony stark the avenger, but as tony. just tony.

 

they aren’t so different in the end, he finds. just two people grieving for a past they can never reclaim, too tired and broken to fight any longer and angry that they have to anyway. the difference? she has hope, still, through it all. he isn’t sure if he can even conjure the concept.

 

he thinks he’s going to miss her.

 

—

 

they’re running out of food, of water, of oxygen. tony’s too-skinny frame is shaking with coughs as he struggles to draw the thin air into his lungs, and all nebula can do is watch, a hand on his shoulder the only comfort she can offer. she can’t even draw him a cup of water; the dwindling supply is feeding the ship’s dying atmosphere.

 

“it’ll be okay, neb,” he whispers out. his first nickname for her, a relic from the tense days at the beginning of the voyage when he could never tell if she wanted to punch him or throw him out the airlock. she wants to shake her head, wants to tell him that no, it isn’t going to be okay. that for the first time in a long time, she’d had a friend, and now she can’t save him. now she can’t even ease his passing. just like she couldn’t save her sister. she can’t do a single thing.

 

_i’ll kill thanos for you._ the words are on her lips, and yet she can’t muster the strength to say them. instead, she hands him his helmet, barely holds back a sob as he smiles at her.

 

“you might want to record a message.” _i’ll get it back to earth for you,_ she says silently. and then she retreats to the furthest corner of the ship, where even her electronic ears can’t pick up what he’s saying, and there, alone, she breaks down.

 

—

 

“it’s you. it’s always been you.” the last words of tony’s message leave his lips, and he leans forward to turn his helmet off. he doesn’t even know whether pepper is still alive to hear it. there’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to tell her, and yet it’s all been reduced to a single message. an apology he never got to give. a plea for her to be alright.

 

he can feel himself drifting off, black edging at his vision. _nebula. where is she?_ and then she’s there, her hand in his a strange quandary of cool metal and warmth. just like her, he thinks. cold, brittle, sharp on the outside, the broken shards of her soul sticking through her, but she is no more machine than he is. her heart is good, deep down. and she is just as ruthless in her love as she is in her hate. he thinks pepper would’ve liked her. he hopes they meet each other someday.

 

_i’m going to miss you._ the words catch in his throat, and a dry cough racks his body.

 

“stark!” her voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. he tries to smile at her. finds that he can’t. squeezes her hand.

 

_it’ll be alright. you’ll be alright._ he shuts his eyes.

 

—

 

it happens so fast that nebula has to replay it in her head, over and over. tony’s chest stops rising and falling. his hand goes slack in hers.

 

“tony,” she says.

 

“tony, wake up.”

 

“ _please._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](https://tconystark.tumblr.com) for assorted endgame rants


End file.
